The Lost Boys of Mercury

Director’s Statement – Clémence Davigo

In my first film, Arrested Lives, I made the portrait of a couple, Annette and Louis, who, for many years, had loved each other despite the prison that separated them. I suggested that they return to the place where Louis had been imprisoned: the old Perrache prisons, then transformed into a university. Walking along the walls and through the memories, Annette and Louis spoke of their furious struggle to escape from prison and to keep their feeling of being alive.

I found this desire to bend the rules of fate in a friend of Louis’ I met during the shooting: his name is André Boiron, but everyone calls him Dédé. Like Louis, Dédé has been in jail. He spent 35 years of his life there for robberies. A tall man with an endearing voice, Dédé has the look of an Italian actor. Smiling and mischievous, he speaks with a slight lisp that contrasts with his flamboyant personality. During our conversations, I understood that his story had a prehistory. That he had lived another form of confinement before the prison. At the age of 9, Dédé was placed in the Belle Étoile reformatory and what he told me about it overwhelmed me.

The three years that Dédé spent in Mercury, a small town in the Savoie region, have stuck in his mind as the worst memories of his life. Even the prison, “was just a joke”, he says. According to him, this is what marked the beginning of the end: “Starting from that moment, my future was already drawn, it was ruined. If I count, besides the years in prison, the ones I spent in reformatory, and other correctional facilities, I have practically always lived locked up”.

It was only years later, once he was retired, that Dédé found, via social networks, a group of former reformatory residents.

One day, Dédé asked me to come with him to the shared meal that this group of ex-Belle Étoile residents organizes every summer. I was both moved and surprised by this unusual reunion. What could have motivated Dédé and his friends to meet again so many years later in a place of which they have terrible memories?

It’s a sunny day, a group of children are having fun nearby. Words and jokes are flying, but I perceive something heavy behind this apparent lightness, a kind of hidden modesty.

What I immediately felt was a strong spirit of brotherhood, joy and friendship. And my desire to make a film was born that day: I was chilled by this terrible story, but in deep empathy for these men and their need to find each other, tirelessly.

I wanted to make a film that would capture what I saw in these men. Each of them is marked by their stay at the Belle Étoile center: nightmares, suicide attempts, social isolation, fragility, health problems… For most of them, the trauma is such that they had to wait 60 years for the word to get out.

It is not just the time that has allowed these people to tell their stories, it is also the strength of the group, the comfort of being together: to feel safe without the need to explain, prove or justify.